/ world today news/ On November 21, eighty-nine years ago, Velin Georgiev came to this world to leave his hard word, his talented word in our literature. The time is not far away, somewhere three summers ago – on the night of May 14-15, 2019, when he was found breathless in his Sofia apartment. He lived there for many years with his wife Snezhana Peycheva and dog Chani. Then – only with the dog Chani. Finally – alone. But not lonely. Because he had his creativity. He creates until his last day. Until your last hour. He wrote his poems on all sorts of pieces of paper. He often pushed a piece of paper into my hands. And on it – a poem. On the left – the date. On the right – his name with signature swirl. So it was written in recent times. On flying leaves. Immortal verses. Hem classic. They are free. From the form, from the thought, from the meaning.
A month or two before his death, he slipped another piece of paper into my hand. On it – “New Stanza”. A “fresh-fresh” poem. Left – March 21, 2019, The day of spring. Right – Velin Georgiev (with twirl signature)…
Write, sing, a new stanza.
Adverbs I: Self-portrait in profile.
Come on, start. Make it to seven
verse – half sonnet…
Self-portrait… Without looking at the neighbor
with his Evening Trumpet.
You are the same medium.
Come on come on. It started well.
Write, sing, sonnet.
You have to get over yourself.
Now is the time. Jump.
That your neighbor is also curious.
You’re not the last loser
who asks about the heavenly abode.
* * *
It also had its Salon – the National Literary Salon “The Ancient Fayton” – with numerous guests. He conceived it in 1994 in the house museum “Dimitar Blagoev – The Grandfather”, and opened it on March 23, 1995 with the premiere of his book. Why did it take him five years after the turning point for Bulgaria, November 10, 1989, and in the sixty-first year of his life, to create a literary salon? In the preface to the collection “The Phaeton with the Pegasi” (2000) he writes:
„For too long we have been stunned by change occurred with the end of a social system. The element turned both young and old into something unseen, unleashed all human and animal passions in man, so that one by one we begin to remember, look around and realize that it cannot be like this. And we looked for islands of salvation. Interest societies, various associations appeared. One – for the protection of cultural monuments – in the house museum “Dimitar Blagoev”.
The simple shed under which the Grandfather’s carriage was “garnished” became a room for a retro-cafe with a bookstore and presentation of new books by modern Bulgarian writers. Of course, serious renovation was needed to turn the shed into a civilized terrain for cultural life. But the beginning was made. A bookstore was opened. And the first premiere, which I decided to do as an experiment, was of my new collection of poems “Bird of God”. It was March 23, 1995, with a premonition of spring…
When I saw the packed hall, with an excited heart I stood in front of the audience and said that the place where we have gathered is a new field in the spiritual territory of the capital and that our ambition is to make it one of the ecologically clean islands of our polluted spiritual space. I emphasized that I had invited them to one of the old town houses of the capital, where the shadows of great people like Dimitar Blagoev, Georgi Bakalov still roam, that the author of the ingenious “Tale of the Staircase” used to come and read his works here. This new literary salon, I announced in front of everyone, marks the beginning of contacts with creators of the Bulgarian artistic word, for communication and conversations, for premieres like that of “Bird of God”. May this bird be a harbinger of the good spring, the spring of our hopes, despite the vicissitudes and vagaries of time literally and figuratively, I wished then. I was afraid that my initiative would not be very successful, and it exceeded even my best expectations”.
The “Phaeton with the Pegasi” is a book in which, in 1998, he collected his “introductions” to the dinners at the Salon, three years after its opening. In the preface, he also says that “this salon is one of my few well-deserved prides, created without anyone’s financial help, on revival principles. The Phaeton with the Pegasi. The poetic celestial chariot… And my thoughts uttered in public hearing”.
In 2007, he published the second collection of the Phaeton series: “Heavenly Chariot”. In it, he looked at what he was doing, reversing the perspective (according to what we read on the back cover): “It’s a marathon. Long short distance running. Looking in a broken mirror. Free epicrisis in crisis. Self-portrait with the title “Alone with everyone”. The collections “The carriage and his singing crickets” (2009), “The carriage – that other thing” (2012) follow – yes, in the preface to the book I will confess: “The carriage – that other thing in my life”. And then comes “Coming of Age” (2013)”, in which he rethought his activity as the head of the Salon:
„The phaeton is already an adult. Eighteen years, Lord, since I was declared a third-age man and stood at the pension counter for meager handouts from my Stepmother, comparable only to the coins of a street musician. But that’s not why I drove the Chariot. And because of the adventure – Life.
And here it is – 18 years…”
* * *
On the occasion of his 80th birthday, Angel Wagenstein wrote:
„I have often called him “Chief Coachman of the Republic.” I called him that in jest, but full of respect for both his poetry – gentle and thoughtful, and for the persistence with which he did not get off the carriage of his devotion for almost two decades. And I saw him in my fantasies sitting on the top—that quiet, well-behaved and delicate, but wild coachman—on the top of a coach in which once, long ago, some bright and pure people had traveled to the horizon of their dreams: those with broad sides hats and with their unfulfilled, perhaps naive or betrayed, or sold, or dashed by the hurricanes of time, hopes…
I admire him and envy him for all that I am incapable of. Isn’t it written that “we sing to the madness of brave songs”. Yes, that’s him – the insane and silent brave, harnessed to an ancient phaeton not by stallions, but by Pegasi, the winged stallions of nostalgia.
And if I have to find the most accurate word, defining the place and meaning of this inspired verse-weaver, the poet from the cabra of the carriage, for the place in the modern existence of Bulgarian literature, I will say the word without any hesitation. She is an APOSTLE! And his work is apostolic!”.
* * *
And after his 80th anniversary, he continued his apostolic work in Phaethona. Dinners, dinners, dinners… Monday evenings… He didn’t give up the Phaeton books either, he just turned them into a sort of memoir, a sort of fiction, a sort of confession, a sort of… what is what it was, only “the other thing”… Thus, in 2016, his book “The Taste of Pain” was published, in memory of Snezhana Peycheva – The Poet’s Muse. Literary critic Pencho Chernaev defined it as a monument not only to Snezhana, but also to Velin and Phaytona. Such are the following “Mercury from a broken thermometer” (2017), “I’m not here” (2018) and “That’s all” (2018). StyhosbEthe poem “Only this” (“a verse was wrong” – so defined by the poet himself!). In it he notes that “feasts of the Spirit”, which he spent at the Salon from 1995 to 2018 is now over 1,150 (loved that Phaeton-related statistic!). And I lived another year after that. And probably the meetings have already become 1200… When he left this world, the Phaeton had already turned a quarter of a century. The longest-running literary salon in our country, which still continues to receive gifted distinguished guests, loyal friends and curious visitors. Indeed, an Apostle of Bulgarian literature! It cannot be said better.
There were people over the years who wanted to push him out of the Salon, looking for a field of expression. They even pushed him to the cup on purpose so that he would fail, because they knew very well that he could do without one, but he couldn’t with one. And they reveled in their cruelty. And he… He shared that this was a nightmarish situation in which he got himself, experiencing his dramas as a budding poet, which became unbearable after 1963, when he wrote the poem “Foreign Blood”, announced by the First as “a call for counter-revolution “. Even in his last survey of his last days in this world, he told Maria Mushkarova:
„Even now, people see that from time to time I fall into an alcoholic trap, and I will say with my hand on my heart that I am not going to experience any pleasure, but to experience another nightmare from which it is very difficult to get out.”.
In Phaethon his tormentors saw a field of expression. And he knew that Phaeton was him. The “other thing” of his life. His apostolic mission to this world. And raced his pegasuses to the last. Thats the difference. They were looking for a performance. And he became an Apostle.
* * *
Since the spring of 2010, he accepted me as his “apprentice”. And since March 29, 2010, when I led the first evening in Faytona, dedicated to a new collection of poems by Vlado Lyubenov, we were next to each other on the goat. In the spring of 2019, he named me as his successor. And flew away – like the prophet Elijah – with the “heavenly chariot”. Immortal.
And now he is in the company of those whose memory he preserved (Dimitar Blagoev, Georgi Bakalov, Hristo Smirnenski, Nikola Vaptsarov, Lamar, Ivan Paunovski, Veselin Andreev…) and his interlocutors from Phaytona, who have already settled in the heavenly settlements (Georgi Pavlov – Pavleto, Efrem Karanfilov, Alexander Gerov, Yanko Dimov, Ivan Dinkov, Bozhidar Bozhilov, Slav Hr. Karaslavov, Georgi Strumski, Nikolay Haitov, Petko Totev and Petrana… There is no way to list them all…) And of course it is in the memories of us, the living…
And it is we, his literary guests and his friends, who have gathered here today, in the Dimitar Blagoev House Museum, to remember him, to honor his memory, to bow before what he left us and bequeathed… Literary critic Pencho Chernaev, the doyen of the Faytona, the poets and fiction writers presented by him Nadezhda Zaharieva, Banko P. Bankov, Ilko Slavchev, Zinaida Khadzhimitova, Svetozar Avramov, Geo Karakashev, Alexandra Ivoilova, Raicho Rusev – Raison, Maria Mushkarova, folk singer Kalinka Zgurova , the poet with the guitar Orlin Milanov, the flutist Maia Sergieva-Bogdanova. I would not miss his daughter Tatiana Velinova, and Emil Behar, the neighbor, the friend who knew Velin’s needs (from the fairy tale “a friend in need knows himself”!), the colleague, and Magdalena Dikova, an acquaintance from his youth. .And it is all of you who, I am sure, carry your memories of beautiful moments with the poet or have your favorite poems from him. All of us – our “Old Carriage” society, our fraternity of writers, actors, musicians, public figures. In his name. In his memory.
* * *
Our literary and musical evening in his memory is entitled “Taking the bull by the horns” – after his poem of the same name:
Now I realize that when
they told me: You’re not for nothing flock…
I had an intention
to write real poems,
that is, to take the bull by the horns.
For a real poem
no time required.
And nobody ever gives it to you.
Because it deserves you
and watching you.
The bull is coming towards me.
But I clung to both horns,
as I know and as I can.
Forward – back… back – forward…
You are not, you are not a hero…
And for so many years already
neither me nor him
intends to stop.
What a surprise will await me…
Hang in there, I tell myself, Velina.
Bol risky moments.
But I am my own judge.
Poems from fragments.
New Hadji Dimitar.
A word about the commemorative evening organized by the National Literary Salon “The Ancient Fayton” in the Dimitar Blagoev House Museum on November 21, 2022.
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